After 50 Years, Ferries Make A Welcome Return To Hawaiian Waters

February 21, 1988|By Robert W. Bone, Special to The Tribune.

LAHAINA, MAUI — During the first half of the century, you could step aboard a vessel in downtown Honolulu on Oahu; take a sunny, half-day sail to the whaling village of Lahaina on Maui; and check in at a well-loved, rambling hotel overlooking Lahaina Harbor.

After World War II, progress of a sort hit transportation facilities in Hawaii. The old hotel remains, but faced with cheap air service, ocean crossings died a natural death. Airports were established far out of town, and interisland travel became more complicated.

Soon there were limousines, taxis and rental cars to deal with along with such concerns as baggage limits and overweight charges. Later came security inspections, gate numbers, long walks to crowded lounges and long waits at baggage claim areas.

Leaping thousands of feet in the air to get from island to island, passengers ceased traveling with whales, dolphins and flying fish. Islands that passed by below the clouds were hardly noticed. Travelers began to feel that Oahu and Maui must be right next door to one other, and that there was nothing interesting to see on the way.

On hops of only 20 minutes, there was no longer any socializing between passengers-no getting to know one another through sharing a common experience. The experience was too short, and too common.

Surprisingly, there has been a small change in this picture. With virtually no splash at all, an outfit called Sea Link of Hawaii has quietly slipped into the water with passenger service aboard a modern craft which duplicates a sea route not seen in Hawaii for 50 years.

Along with a few others (the word hasn`t gotten around much), I stepped onto the Maui Princess at noontime on a warm winter day at Pier 8, downtown in the business and banking district of Honolulu. Two fellow passengers rode up on bicycles and then carried their vehicles on board. Obviously the new trip is going to be a boon to pedal-pushers.

``The airlines treat bikes terribly,`` said George Mortimer. He had taken his 10-speed to visit Honolulu friends and was returning to his home on Maui. ``They charge 20 bucks and they don`t even guarantee which flight a bike will arrive on. This is a much better deal for me.``

Like other Oahu-Maui passengers, Mortimer paid $42 for a one-way boat ticket, and there was no extra charge for his bicycle. Most one-way tickets on Aloha and Hawaiian Airlines, the two principal interisland carriers, cost $37- to which passengers would add cab fare or rental car charges.

Our anachronistic ferry sailed from Honolulu at 12:15 p.m., bound first for Molokai, known as the Friendly Island. The four crew members-captain, two stewards and a stewardess-live on Molokai, and all seemed determined to live up to their island`s sobriquet. Steward Greg Moran brought his guitar. Soft drinks along with locally made Saloon Pilot Crackers were offered free in the snack bar. Steward Dennis Bryson confided that the crackers would be good for any Hawaiian mal de mer that might be encountered.

In its younger days, the Maui Princess was used for ferrying crews to oil rigs off the Louisiana coast. The 118-foot, four-prop craft is now fitted with aircraft-type seats in the air conditioned main cabin plus plastic contoured seats on the large open deck above. Most important, it is also equipped with gyroscopic stabilizers which fight the heaves and rolls which plagued surface passengers of olden days while crossing the often uncomfortable channel between Oahu and Molokai.

``This is the smoothest vessel there is for these waters,`` said Capt. Pete Fischle, with all the optimism of a Friendly Islander. ``And that knife bow design cuts right through those swells.``

Relatively speaking, anyway, captain. As a member of the Tender Tummy Brigade, I would have felt better during the first hour of the trip-until the Molokai Channel was behind us-if I had remembered my Dramamine. But with the aid of Dennis` Saloon Pilots and a little Sprite, we all survived.

Halfway through our trip, the Maui Princess called at Kaunakakai, the only real town on Molokai. About two-dozen tourists who had spent the day exploring the Friendly Island climbed aboard for the trip back to their Maui hotels. At $21 each way, their short cruise was an especially good deal. They had left Maui at 7:30 a.m., arrived on Molokai at 8:45 a.m., and then had more than seven hours to tour the Friendly Island until the boat picked them up at 4 p.m.

For the next hour and a half we enjoyed a wonderfully smooth ride steaming majestically down the middle of the channels between the islands. These seemed like superwide superhighways, and we began seeing the ocean as the ancient Hawaiians did-a positive conduit (not a negative barrier) between one island and another.